Retail Earnings and Sales to Improve in Q4: Analyst

Retailers are gearing up for one of the busiest shopping days of the year—Black Friday. Even with the Internet and consumers starting their shopping earlier in the season, it’s still an important day for brick-and-mortar retailers so how are companies expected to perform throughout the holiday season? Randy Konik, specialty retail analyst at Jefferies, shared his view.

“The one good news is that inventories in the channel are tracking below demand for the first time in over a year,” Konik told CNBC. “That means retailers are going to show significant margin strength this holiday season.”

Konik said the retailers are likely to exceed their fourth quarter earnings expectations by a wide margin and sales will start to accelerate, particularly during Christmastime.

“If you look at September, October and November same-store sales, retailers posted very strong back-to-school results,” he said.

“We think that shows a high correlation into the holiday shopping season…So we think consumers will follow through on better than expected spending in the holidays—with stronger spending in the spring of 2010.”